“New Zealand fishermen in the Ross Sea have caught what’s thought to be the largest squid ever found. Its estimated weight is about 450 kilograms.The graphic to the left was lifted from the BBC News Site.
The photo below is from News.Scotsman.com
“All we knew prior to this specimen coming through was that this animal lived in the abyssal environment down in Antarctica,” said New Zealand squid expert and senior research fellow at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Steve O’Shea.
O’Shea said if calamari were made from the Colossal squid’s rings it would be the size of tractor tyres.
It appears the huge beast (a prime example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni ) allowed itself to be drawn to the surface while it munched on a snack. It seems it is a male. It was still alive when landed and was promptly frozen and taken to NewZealand where it will be preserved and studied.
I just know there will be conspiracy theorists who will see the machinations of the Great One of the Deep in this event.
Anyone for swimming?
Ærchies Archive - Digital Detritus 
Can that squid make a yummy breakfast?
Qsn: How long can hercules take to much down a squidzilla pie?
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Sehr geEhrter AerChie
The sensitive caring side of die RegenCoaster will be hurt, grieved, grieved indeed
to read without any attempt in your Bloggo most Excellente to prepare her for the full horror
of this dreadful dissolution of this Giant Crustacean, which (if Monsieur Metro’s strange Evolutionary Religious Beliefs are true) would be a relative of die RegenCoaster & her Homo pSeudo Sapiens relations
Shocking – it is particularly shocking that this puir creature is now in a freezer, prior to distribution to Gourmet-Predators of taste and discrimination
– don’t tell Philipa or the Wandering Coyote about this or they may well demand a slice, as an alternative to battered Tree Octopus
Yr obedt servt etc
G Eagle
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Hmm. I’m not much of a kalamari fan, nor sushi. But I suspect that somewhere Takeshi Kaga is sharpening his magical Ginzu sword.
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“It allowed itself to be drawn to the surface while munching on a snack”
surely the saddest sentence in squid history. and let that be a lesson to all those munchers down there…
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Herr G eaGle, I realise the wet one will be hurt by this assault upon her squid-sensitive senses however honest journalistic license compelled me to be first with this calamaric story. Do you think she would want one scoop or two?
Metro, There will be a (insert collective noun here) of chefs lining up, sharpened implements in hand, claw and tentacle.
nursemyra, You will have noticed it was a male. In future, I shall take care when – – – never mind.
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Eeeeeuuuwwwww! Fancy trying to clean that much squid for eating! I prefer mine a little more managable. Sort of like the ones which ended up on someone’s pillow at some time in the dark and distant past … and he’ll have to tell you about that “in” joke LOL
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I can’t help but feel sad that something so large and magnificent is dead now.
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Buff, I have spent much of the past decade trying to forget the horror of that moment!
hmh, Sad, but it was the monster’s own choice. He was not hooked, he was simply snacking. By the time he was near the surface he was almost deceased.
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She would want two scoops.
But it is now 2 in the morning and she needs to go sleepies. Cthulhu arranged this, no doubt, so as to draw suspicion away from her. TOTALLY.
Seriously, I’ll blog it tomorrow. So much crap out there…so many fallacies.
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I also share hmh’s sadness about this amazing creature being lured up from its natural home, then promptly killed and put on ice.
Do we actually need to know more about colossal squids? Things we can only discover by killing them? Surely this could wait until technology advances so that we can observe them undisturbed in their natural habitat.
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From my reading of the reports, it could be that the squid was not hooked or caught deliberately. The ship was long-line fishing (of which I disapprove) for Patagonian Toothfish when this careless cephalopod decided to chomp into one of the toothfish and basically followed it up to the surface. Once it got close to the surface it began to die because of pressure differentials. All the fishermen did was to scoop it up at that point.
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Patagonian Toothfish are themselves endangered, I believe. And we’re in the position that we used to be in with land animals; the best way to study them is to kill them. But yes, this was accidentally hooked. Darwin and Audubon killed a lot of animals, in order to study them; that’s how primitive our research of the sea is right now.
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Indeed they are endangered, being slow breeders the overfishing is reducing their numbers severely. We are studying by killing yet I believe the carnage in the oceans is worse that it was on land because we, on land, do not see it, from the surface we do not see the depradations and the depopulation of the deeps. We need to stop Government subsidies to the fishing industries of the world or there will be no fish left!
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